Saturday, January 31, 2009

"(WMR) -- Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical “Greater Israel.”

Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.

Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslims, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the U.S. invasion in 2003, that is considered historical Jewish “property.”

The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish “properties” outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call “Judea and Samaria.”

Kurdish and Iraqi sources report that Israel’s Mossad is working hand-in-hand with Israeli companies and “tourists” to stake a claim to the Jewish “properties” of Israel in Iraq. The Mossad has already been heavily involved in training the Kurdish Pesha Merga military forces.

Reportedly assisting the Israelis are foreign mercenaries paid for by U.S. Christian evangelical circles that support the concept of “Christian Zionism.”

Iraqi nationalists charge that the Israeli expansion into Iraq is supported by both major Kurdish factions, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Iraq’s nominal President Jalal Talabani. Talabani’s son, Qubad Talabani, serves as the KRG’s representative in Washington, where he lives with his wife Sherri Kraham, who is Jewish.

Also supporting the Israeli land acquisition activities is the Kurdistan Democratic Party, headed by Massoud Barzani, the president of the KRG. One of Barzani’s five sons, Binjirfan Barzani, is reportedly heavily involved with the Israelis.

The Israelis and their Christian Zionist supporters enter Iraq not through Baghdad but through Turkey. In order to depopulate residents of lands the Israelis claim, Mossad operatives and Christian Zionist mercenaries are staging terrorist attacks against Chaldean Christians, particularly in Nineveh, Irbil, al-Hamdaniya, Bartalah, Talasqaf, Batnayah, Bashiqah, Elkosheven, Uqrah, and Mosul. These attacks by the Israelis and their allies are usually reported as being the responsibility of “Al Qaeda” and other Islamic “jihadists.”

The ultimate aim of the Israelis is to depopulate the Christian population in and around Mosul and claim the land as biblical Jewish land that is part of “Greater Israel.” The Israeli/Christian Zionist operation is a replay of the depopulation of the Palestinians in the British mandate of Palestine after World War II.

In June 2003, a delegation of Israelis visited Mosul and said that it was Israel’s intentions, with the assistance of Barzani, to establish Israeli control of the shrine of Jonah in Mosul and the shrine of Nahum in the Mosul plains. The Israelis said Israeli and Iranian Jewish pilgrims would travel via Turkey to the area of Mosul and take over lands where Iraqi Christians lived."

The mere monitoring of bloody conflict assumes precedence over human sufferingA Good CommentBy Robert Fisk

"I wonder if we are "normalising" war. It's not just that Israel has yet again got away with the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza.

And after its own foreign minister said that Israel's army had been allowed to "go wild" there, it seems to bear out my own contention that the Israeli "Defence Force" is as much a rabble as all the other armies in the region. But we seem to have lost the sense of immorality that should accompany conflict and violence. The BBC's refusal to handle an advertisement for Palestinian aid was highly instructive. It was the BBC's "impartiality" that might be called into question. In other words, the protection of an institution was more important than the lives of children. War was a spectator sport whose careful monitoring – rather like a football match, even though the Middle East is a bloody tragedy – assumed precedence over human suffering.

I'm not sure where all this started.....

I'm not sure when the change came. Was it Israel's disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Sabra and Chatila massacre by Israel's allies of 1,700 Palestinian civilians? (Gaza just missed that record.) Israel claimed (as usual) to be fighting "our" "war against terror" but the Israeli army is not what it's cracked up to be and massacres (Qana comes to mind in 1996 and the children of Marwahine in 2006) seem to come attached to it. And of course, there's the little matter of the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 which we enthusiastically supported with weapons to both sides, and the Syrian slaughter of thousands of civilians at Hama and...

No, I rather think it was the 1991 Gulf War. Our television lads and lasses played it for all it was worth – it was the first war that had "theme" music to go with the pictures – and when US troops simply smothered alive thousands of Iraqi troops in their trenches, we learned about it later and didn't care much, and even when the Americans ignored Red Cross rules to mark mass graves, they got away with it. There were women in some of these graves – I saw British soldiers burying them. And I remember driving up to Mutla ridge to show a Red Cross delegate where I had seen a mass grave dug by the Americans, and he looked at the plastic poppy an American had presumably left there and said: "Something has happened.".....

Then there was Afghanistan and all that "collateral damage" and whole villages wiped out and then there was Iraq in 2003 and the tens of thousands – or half a million or a million – Iraqi civilians killed. Once more, at the very start, we were back to our old tricks, bombing bridges and radio stations and at least one civilian estate in Baghdad where "we" believed Saddam was hiding. We knew it was packed with civilians (Christians, by chance) but the Americans called it a "high risk" operation – meaning that they risked not hitting Saddam – and 22 civilians were killed. I saw the last body, that of a baby, dug from the rubble.

And we don't seem to care. We fight in Iraq and now we're going back to fight in Afghanistan again and all the human rights and protections appear to have vanished once more. We will destroy villages and we will find that the Afghans hate us and we will form more criminal militias – as we did in Iraq – to fight for us. The Israelis organised a similar militia in their occupation zone in southern Lebanon, run by a crackpot Lebanese army major. But now their own troops "go wild". And the BBC is worried about its "impartiality"? "

As battle raged in Gaza, Israeli soldiers forced Majdi Abed Rabbo to risk his life as a go-between in the hunt for three Hamas fighters. This is his story...

By Donald Macintyre in Jabalya, GazaFriday, 30 January 2009

(Left) Majdi Abed Raboh's house is in ruins following Israeli attacks.

".....The soldiers then ordered two other residents to take cameras into the house to photograph it and the Hamas fighters. Next, the army sent in a dog which returned injured and died soon afterwards. The gunmen were then told: "You have 15 minutes to come out with no clothes on and with your hands up. If you don't, we will bring the house down on you."

After 15 minutes, Mr Abed Rabbo said, a bulldozer moved into the area between the houses and the mosque, destroying large parts of his house before systematically demolishing the one the gunmen were hiding in. It was now Tuesday afternoon.

Before he was taken away, Mr Abed Rabbo had a clear view of his wrecked house, the pulverised property next door, and the bodies of the three Hamas gunmen lying in the rubble. "

"....But that's not all. The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause.

And perhaps a boy or girl from Gaza will survive, too. Perhaps they'll grow, and with them, their nerve, indignation, and rage. Perhaps they'll become soldiers or militiamen for one of the groups that struggle in Palestine. Perhaps they'll find themselves in combat with Israel. Perhaps they'll do it firing a gun. Perhaps sacrificing themselves with a belt of dynamite around their waists.

And then, from up there above, they will write about the Palestinians' violent nature and they'll make declarations condemning that violence and they'll get back to discussing if it's Zionism or anti- Semitism.

"Trans Arab Research Institute (TARI), an independent American think tank registered in the state of Massachusetts, and the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Its Social Consequences of the University of Massachusetts are convening an international conference to undertake a critical assessment of the current status of the two state solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and to explore the logic and feasibility of a one-state solution based on equal citizenship for Palestinians and Israelis. The conference will be held on March 28 and 29, 2009 on the campus of the University of Massachusetts......"

".....Al Jazeera has been out with Amnesty International investigators conducting house-to-house searches in Gaza and collecting all of the evidence, such as shrapnel fragments, that will aid in the investigation.

"Hamas, the Palestinian group in power in the Gaza Strip, has begun handing out the promised aid money as part of a broader relief effort to those who lost their homes or loved ones in Israel's recent military offensive.

Pepe Escobar: How the Obama presidency is developing its Iran strategy

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a detailed letter of congratulations to new U.S. President Barack Obama. Now comes the time for Obama to return the courtesy. But drafting a letter is not all there is to it: the new administration is also taking other diplomatic steps, such as naming an Iran envoy, which may even tower among his pairs. Pepe Escobar examines who seems to be on Obama's side, and who seems to be peddling a different agenda."

"A Spanish judge accepted a lawsuit filed by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) against senior Israeli officials for committing war crimes against the Palestinian people after the officials gave the go ahead for shelling the house of a senior Hamas leader in 2002, killing 15 Palestinians and wounding more than 100, the Arabs48 news website reported.

At least nine of the casualties in the shelling were children and women. The Israeli Army dropped a 15 ton bomb on the house of Salah Shihada, a Hamas leader.

The Spanish Judge, Fernando Andreu, accepted the lawsuit, which was filed by the PCHR, and sent two letters; one to Israel informing Israeli officials that a probe is underway, and the second to the Palestinian Authority informing them that the case has been accepted....... "

Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 30 January 2009

(Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in the Gaza Strip after having arrived with the third Free Gaza Movement boat in November. She has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza, accompanying ambulances while witnessing and documenting the ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.)

I start to tell the stories of Ezbet Abbed Rabu, eastern Jabaliya, where homes off the main north south road, Salah al-Din, were penetrated by bullets, bombs and/or soldiers. If they weren't destroyed, they were occupied or shot up. Or occupied and then destroyed. The army was creative in their destruction, in their defacing of property, in their insults. Creative in the ways they could shit in rooms and save their shit for cupboards and unexpected places. Actually, their creativity wasn't so broad. The rest was routine: ransack the house from top to bottom. Turn over or break every clothing cupboard, kitchen shelf, television, computer, window pane and water tank......"

".........Along these lines, President Obama and his party have come up with a "stimulus package," and I must pause to remark how important language is to these people. It's a "package," you see, just like a Christmas gift, only better, because they, the politicians, get to play Santa Claus and shower their constituents with presents. This legislative larceny is predicated on the oddly counterintuitive notion that we can and should spend our way out of poverty – that the sins of our profligacy can be forgiven if only we indulge in yet more ravenous forms of gluttony.

To ordinary Americans, this kind of Washington-think is wholly alien: it is Bizarroeconomics. After all, when normal human beings are in financial trouble they cut back on their spending, as they are doing now. The American polity, in its younger days, would naturally apply the same logic to government, but, in our dotage, we impart magical powers to the organs of the state, which can produce wealth out of thin air, with only the aid of a printing press. Oh, yes, we understand – albeit vaguely – that this is debt for future generations to pay. Yet we recall – even more vaguely – old bromides like "We owe it to ourselves," which are embedded in our collective memory like flies in amber, and we are reassured.

Putting aside Bizarro economics, for now, and my wholesale rejection of same, there is one way we can stimulate the economy with a mighty injection of cash into the hands of one and all. No, not another government subsidy, but the cutting of the single largest federal expenditure down to a manageable size: the U.S. military budget...... "

"30/01/2009 An Egyptian newspaper revealed a local Egyptian firm was regularly supplying the Israeli occupation army with food supplies via the “Oja” crossing, throughout the war on Gaza, at a time the Rafah crossing was closed for aids and medical supplies for injured Palestinians.

The “Ousbou’” Arabic for “Week”, expressed deep resentment at the Egyptian firm’s move to supply the Israeli army with Egyptian food at a time “all of Egypt was grieving Gaza and praying for the innocents who were starving in the besieged Strip.”

The newspaper revealed what it said was details about the people involved, their license numbers and places of residence as well as the quantities they had transferred and the dates."

"CAIRO, (PIC)-- An Egyptian newspaper revealed that an Egyptian company supplied IOF troops with food through the Owja crossing during the war on Gaza while the Rafah crossing was closed in the face of relief supplies to Palestinians.

Al-Osbo' weekly said that regular convoys of lorries carried the food supplies from the Sadat city to the Owja crossing to deliver the products of the "International Union of Wholesome Food Products" to the Israeli "Channel Foods" company which in turn supplies it to the IOF troops.

The paper expressed horror at the thought of an Egyptian company supplied the IOF troops with foods labelled "Latha" which means "Delicious" at the time the Egyptian people were expressing their rage at the sorry state of the people of Gaza under siege and under attack.

The paper gave details of drivers, their licence numbers, their addresses, the amount of food they transported and the dates of their deliveries, especially during the war on Gaza and compared those figures with the figures of casualties in Gaza and the closure of the Rafah crossing.

The paper also pointed out that some Egyptian advocates of normalisation with the Zionists have sided with the Egyptian official stand fearing deterioration in relations with their Zionist business partners.

Businesses that had links with the Zionists were especially worried that their businesses would lose out because of the renewed calls for boycotting the Zionist state, and tried to keep their business under wraps."

"30/01/2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan received a hero's welcome on his return to Istanbul on Friday after he stormed out of a heated debate on Israel's Gaza war at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Thousands of people gathered at Istanbul's Ataturk airport to greet Erdogan when he returned, waving Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanting his name.

During the debate, Peres, with a raised voice and a pointed finger at Erdogan, sought to defend Israel’s massacre of 1,300 Palestinians in 22 days of war on Gaza. "I don't think I will come back to Davos because you don't let me speak," said Erdogan, who then stood up and walked out of the conference hall.

"Do you understand the meaning of a situation where hundreds of rockets are falling a day on women and children who cannot sleep quietly, who need to sleep in shelters? What is the matter with you? You don't understand, and I am not prepared for lies."

Peres's comments were met by hearty applause.Erdogan asked the moderator, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, to let him speak once more.

"Only a minute," Ignatius replied.

Speaking in Turkish, Erdogan said, "I remember two former prime ministers in your country who said they felt very happy when they were able to enter Palestine on tanks. I find it very sad that people applaud what you said. There have been many people killed. And I think that it is very wrong and it's not humanitarian."

Apparently, the Turkish Prime Minister was never given the necessary time by Ignatius, to reply......

"President Peres, you are older than I am. Maybe you are feeling guilty and that is why you are so strong in your words. You killed people. I remember the children who died on beaches," Erdogan said, through an interpreter.

The Turkish premier then said, "Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I don't think I will come back to Davos after this."......

Erdogan brushed past reporters outside the hall. His wife appeared upset. "All Peres said was a lie. It was unacceptable," she said, eyes glistening. "

COMMENT:Erdogan showed courage and was true to principle, unlike any Arab who was sitting there at Davos. This included the eunuch Amr Moussa, of the so-called "Arab" League, who sat quietly in close proximity to the war criminal, and his new ally, Peres!

Bravo Erdogan; you provided a badly needed example to the cowardly Arabs!

"29/01/2009 Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah held on Thursday a press conference to commemorate the "Freedom Day" (the commemoration of freeing Lebanese and Arab detainees out of the Israeli jails on 29/1/2004). The main part of the conference was devoted to details of the Operation Al-Redwan accomplished last May and in which all detainees in Israeli prisons, including chief of detainees Samir Qintar, were freed......

ISRAEL INCAPABLE OF ACHIEVING ITS GOALS IN GAZAThe Hezbollah Secretary General then tackled the 22-day Israeli deadliest offensive against Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians, including 420 children and injured thousands others. "The actual goal of the Gaza war was to subjugate and wipe out the Resistance and topple the Hamas government," Sayyed Nasrallah declared, noting that the Zionists did not have any declared goals of their war on Gaza.

Indeed, and according to Sayyed Nasrallah, the Zionist entity was incapable of achieving any of its goals in Gaza. "There was an international and Arab US decision to exploit what is left of the Bush period to change the facts. However, Israel has politically and militarily failed and some voices in Israel are saying that the failure of Gaza war is the same as the July War in Lebanon," his eminence pointed out.

Sayyed Nasrallah praised the Palestinian Resistance for its steadfastness, heroism and firmness. His eminence recalled that the Resistance's strength has pushed the Israelis to declare a unilateral ceasefire, although it hasn't achieved any of its goals. "Those who did not recognize the Resistance's victory in Lebanon won't recognize the victory in Palestine for the same political reasons," Sayyed Nasrallah noted.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah Secretary General noted that the Israeli war against the Palestinians, which has started even before the latest aggression, was still ongoing. "Gaza blockade continues amid dire humanitarian and economic conditions," his eminence noted, stressing that the war and aggression against Gaza is still going on, but in different forms.

"Linking the reconstruction of Gaza to political terms represents an unacceptable and humiliating form of political blackmail," Sayyed Nasrallah stressed. His eminence called on everyone to provide the Gazans with help without asking for return or setting conditions.

Hezbollah leader also condemned all “impudent” statements made by some European officials against the Palestinian Resistance. "One of the European officials condemned Hamas and called it a terrorist organization that launches missiles because it kills what he called "Israeli civilians." However, he didn't dare to accuse Israel of committing crimes," Sayyed Nasrallah noted. "This proves to us that the American-European do not even admit that Israel has committed the most barbaric crimes before the whole world."

Answering a question, his eminence reiterated Hezbollah firm position towards Egypt over the Gaza offensive. His eminence re-condemned the Egyptian regime "because it continues to close the Rafah crossing." His eminence accused the mentioned regime of "lying," stressing that the Rafah crossing was not open, “I doubt that this regime is an honest mediator because it works on imposing the conditions of others on the Palestinians.”

"My stance against the Egyptians was correct, and I still denounce their ongoing closure of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza," Sayyed Nasrallah said. "The opening of the Rafah crossing is crucial to the Palestinian people, the Resistance and the living conditions there… its closure is one of the biggest crimes in history," his eminence added.

"The scale of the damage caused by Israel's war on Gaza continues to emerge.Palestinian agriculture officials estimate the cost to the strip's farming sector will be more than 200 million dollars.Al Jazeera's Mike Kirsch reports from Gaza, where many farmers are devastated at having to start again from scratch."

"Israel's 22-day War on Gaza took a heavy emotional toll on the people there. Doctors say at least half the population needs professional help to come to terms with what happened.

And Palestinian men seem to have been hit particularly hard. Many had already struggled for two years looking for work in a territory under siege. Now the horrors of war have made the search even harder...and far more traumatic..."

"Khaled Mash'al, head of Hamas' political bureau, said last night that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its current situation does not represent all Palestinians. [COMMENT:This is very true. Hamas should capitalize on the wide-spread support it has among Palestinians to organize a new Palestinian body representing all Palestinians, including those in the Diaspora. A new Palestine National Council, democratic, inclusive and open to all patriotic forces should be elected. The old PLO has long been hijacked and its carcass has been rotting in Ramallah for a while; we smell it all the way here in the U.S.]

The Hamas leader made his comments during a meeting in the Qatari capital of Doha at a conference called "celebrating the Gaza victory".

He added that the PLO serves to divide instead of reconcile. Moreover, he announced that he is working to reconstruct the factional body into what can be called, by today's terms, “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

“We must build a national reference to represent the Palestinians at home and abroad, including all national forces, the Palestinian people and the national trends.” Mash'al said.

During his speech, the Hamas leader sent a message to George Mitchell, the newly appointed US envoy to the Middle East, saying that political, security and military efforts would fail if the resistance groups are ignored........

At the end of his speech, Mash'el gave the stage to Mohammad Nazzal, Hamas political bureau member. At first, Nazzal thanked Mauritania and Qatar for the moral and financial support to the people of the Gaza Strip. He noted that the money that has been donated will reach those who desperately need it. "We want to ensure that funds reach those in need and that mechanisms for distribution run in a fair and transparent manner."

Nazzal finalized his speech by accusing some Palestinian and Arab parties of giving a cover to Israel's latest attack on Gaza. "I can confirm that there are Palestinian parties who knew of an impending strike, and also there is the involvement of the Arab parties before the outbreak.” "

"Announcing his new State Department, United States President Barack Obama stressed "America's commitment to lead". But lead where? Where's the boldness, the real change of mindset? The Pentagon's "arc of instability" hovers over Obama's "Clinton-3" State Department like a ghostly self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless, of course, the Obama White House really kicks out ideology and steers the US back to politics....

This will be a long war, which happens to be another Pentagon denomination for the "war on terror". Envoy Holbrooke himself said so, in a Foreign Affairs article published before the US presidential election: "The situation in Afghanistan is far from hopeless. But as the war enters its eighth year, Americans should be told the truth: it will last a long time - longer than the United States' longest war to date, the 14-year conflict [1961-75] in Vietnam."

A new Vietnam? No wonder progressive America is having a collective heart attack. This means, among other things, that Holbrooke will not talk to the Taliban - or the neo-Taliban in Pakistan. He will go all the way for Obama's surge - more US troops, more NATO troops and hardcore Vietnam-style counter-insurgency across the Hindu Kush. Obama needed only three days in office to already draw his first blood inside the Pakistani tribal areas....... "

"Zionist hasbara fighters claimed that it is impossible to talk with Hamas because its charter, written in 1988, calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Hamas leader Haniyeh has said publicly that Hamas is willing to accept a Palestinian state with 1967 borders and thereby will effectively recognize Israel. So from Hamas' site, a solution of the conflict is possible.

The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.

The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.

Judea and Samaria are the West Bank.

Likud is likely to win next month' election in Israel. Its leader, Netanjahu, promises to extend the Zionist settlements in the West Bank.

This violates international law, the roadmap and other peace plans......

The Golan

Based on the Likud-led government's proposal, the 10th Knesset passed the law to extend Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration over the Golan Heights, thus establishing Israeli sovereignty over the area. The government will continue to strengthen Jewish settlement on the Golan......."

"After talking to our partners in Gaza, many of our donors and discussing the situation in Gaza, we are announcing our next trip to Gaza during the week of March 2, 2009. We hope to bring in a cargo ship loaded with building supplies and medical equipment plus take a passenger boat as well. Over the next month, the organizers will be busy raising the funds to purchase both boats and are also going to put out a plea for building materials, especially cement, wood and PVC piping...."

By Ewa Jasiewicz - Jabaliya, Gaza(Ewa Jasiewicz is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer, and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement)Palestine Chronicle

"Yesterday saw the first canvas tents go up in the Gaza strip to house internally displaced people. The UN estimates 50,000 people have been made homeless due to the bombing and bulldozing of homes and properties by Israeli occupation forces in Israel's 21 day offensive in the Gaza Strip. The displacement is just meters in the case of many families who don't want to move far from their ancestral land, and have opted to move into tents on the site of their destroyed houses.

People have lost more than their homes here. Entire families, living on family land, handed down throughout generations, have had their protection, life's investment, and community networks literally crushed. The Al Eer family, living on land close to the border in 'Izbat 'Abed Rabbu had eleven homes reduced to rubble, and had five members dragged out from under one home........."

"When the Beirut-based Al-Quds satellite television interviewed me last week on the recent genocidal Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip, it never occurred to me that the few sound bites I uttered would land me in a slimy prison cell at the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Preventive Security Apparatus (PSA) in Hebron.

During that interview, I was asked why the American-backed regime in Ramallah was not allowing large protests in solidarity with the Gaza Strip. I answered that the PA didn't want things to get out of control and that it didn't wish to antagonize Israel.

Interestingly, Israel itself had allowed a massive demonstration against the war on Gaza to take place in the Israeli Arab town of Sakhnin where as many as 150,000 people, including some Jewish peace activists, took to the streets to protest the nauseating killings and bombings of civilian targets all over the coastal enclave.

I further pointed out that Israel didn't really respect the PA and was effectively treating it as a subservient entity serving Israeli interests.......

On Jan. 18, shortly afternoon, someone from the local PSA center invited me to drink a cup of coffee with the head of office for five minutes. Eventually, the "five minutes" were stretched into 55 hours of nightmarish experience......

Half an hour later, I was taken to the PSA headquarters in Hebron, 14 kilometers away. There, I was scolded for "besmirching and distorting the PA image," "sowing discontent," and "indulging in incitement." ......

I told my interrogators that what they were doing was against the law, since the Palestinian law stated that "the security apparatus has no right to question, interrogate or detain a journalist in connection to his or her work." When I uttered these words, one operative scoffed at me, saying that "we are in Palestine, not in Sweden." .......

....... However, I did forcefully argue that suppressing freedom of expression, especially press freedom, was a very harmful idea. I further explained that when people are made to fear the government, it means that that the government is undemocratic and had a lot of things to hid from the people.......

I knew that the main aim behind my brief but unjustified incarceration was to make me exercise "self-censorship" and refrain from calling things by their real names.......

Unfortunately, very few people within the Palestinian security establishment understand the language of human rights and civil liberties......

Hence, one would exaggerate very little by saying that the situation of human rights and civil liberties is the West Bank is probably worse today than it ever has been since the establishment of the PA more than 15 years ago.

Rampant Violations

In truth, my latest experience pales in comparison to the more serious persecution haunting non-conformist journalists throughout the West Bank. Last week, PA security personnel assaulted and severely beat AP correspondent Majdee Ishtayyeh while filming an "unlicensed" demonstration in Ramallah. Ishtayya reportedly was taken to a nearby building where he was badly beaten, causing a severe hemorrhage from his nose.....

Last year, as many as 20 Palestinian journalists were imprisoned for relatively lengthy periods for reporting news or views the PA regime considers detrimental to their interests or image. Many of these journalists were beaten and even tortured for refusing to abide by the "official line." And in nearly all cases, concocted charges were leveled against them, such as "sowing division, incitement, and endangering national unity."

Last year, Awad Rajoub, an Al-Jazeera.net correspondent was detained in a PSA prison cell in Hebron in what he described "harsh and humiliating conditions" for 32 days.....Rajoub was accused of interviewing critics of the PA......

During my brief stint at the Hebron jail, I saw several inmates being subjected to the Shabah (hooding) technique where a prisoner is made to sit down in a small room with his hands tied to his back. At one point, I heard an inmate crying "why are you beating me, why are you beating me." ........"

There was one region that saw the bankruptcy of neoliberalism - and now the rest of the world is having to catch up

Seumas MilneThe Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009

"On 9 October 1967, Che Guevara faced a shaking sergeant Mario Teran, ordered to murder him by the Bolivian president and CIA, and declared: "Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man." The climax of Stephen Soderbergh's two-part epic, Che, in real life this final act of heroic defiance marked the defeat of multiple attempts to spread the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America.

But 40 years later, the long-retired executioner, now a reviled old man, had his sight restored by Cuban doctors, an operation paid for by revolutionary Venezuela in the radicalised Bolivia of Evo Morales. Teran was treated as part of a programme which has seen 1.4 million free eye operations carried out by Cuban doctors in 33 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It is an emblem both of the humanity of Fidel Castro and Guevara's legacy, but also of the transformation of Latin America which has made such extraordinary co-operation possible......

None of that means the global crisis now engulfing Latin America isn't potentially a threat to all its radical governments, with falling commodity prices cutting revenues and credit markets drying up. Revolutions can't stand still, and the deflation of the oil cushion that allowed Chávez to leave the interests of the traditional Venezuelan ruling elite untouched means pressure for more radical solutions is likely to grow. Meanwhile, the common sense about the bankruptcy of neoliberalism first recognised in Latin America has now gone global. Whether it generates the same kind of radicalism elsewhere remains to be seen."

"OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Ehud Olmert, the Israeli premier, has told the American envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell that the PA leadership in Ramallah led by Mahmoud Abbas, the former PA chief, should return to rule the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli official quoted Olmert as saying that following the Israeli war on Gaza the Hamas authority should be eliminated and the PA in Ramallah should restore power in the Strip.

Olmert also told Mitchell that permanent opening of all Gaza crossings was hinged on releasing the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is held captive in Gaza by Palestinian resistance factions.

The Israeli premier said that the ceasefire that went into effect as of 18/1/2009 would be evaluated in accordance with the halt in firing of locally made rockets on Israeli targets and a halt to the smuggling of weapons. ........"

"DOHA, (PIC)-- Khaled Mishaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, stated Wednesday in Qatar that his Movement would embark on building a national authority referred to by the Palestinian people at home and abroad and involving all national forces and trends.

During a ceremony held in Doha to celebrate the victory of Gaza, Mishaal said that there could be no reconciliation while the Palestinian people inside and outside are left without a national authority representing them, adding that the PLO, which Hamas is banned from joining or rebuilding, is impotent and an instrument of division.

He underlined that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions welcome dialog and reconciliation but on the basis of the national constants and not according to foreign agendas.

The Hamas leader said that any invitation for reconciliation would lose its credibility in light of the political arrests, the closure of national institutions and the coordination with the occupation, adding that those who want reconciliation must provide the appropriate climate and show good intentions. "I say clearly, after the blood of Gaza, the coordination in the West Bank with the enemy, that committed massacres against our people in the Strip, is nationally unacceptable. It is an enemy, not a neighbor or a normal party," Mishaal highlighted.

He pointed out that the statement which says that Israel withdrew from Gaza in deference to the will of the world is untrue and unjust because the Israeli occupation was aware that the cost of its aggression and invasion would be dearly.

The Hamas leader considered the victory of Gaza as the beginning of the liberation of Palestine, adding that the battle is still going on politically and militarily, and the Palestinian resistance has not yet put down their weapons.

Mishaal outlined a number of urgent issues which, he said, are on the agenda of Hamas for the next stage including the reconstruction file, noting that the criterion of success in this file is that the funds should reach every Palestinian in Gaza not the pockets of corrupt parties.

The Hamas leader declared his rejection of the Israeli ceasefire conditions, confirming that his Movement would not accept the equation of opening the crossings in exchange for Israeli captive soldier Gilad Shalit. He explained that the release of Shalit could be achieved through the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the truce equation could be fulfilled through lifting the siege and opening the crossings."

"29/01/2009 Hamas politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal said Wednesday that Israel's conditions for a long-term truce with Hamas were "unacceptable."

Mashaal said Hamas will not accept that Israel open the crossings with the Gaza Strip only after Hamas releases an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza resistance fighters in June 2006. "We were recently informed of (Israel's) conditions for calm ... We reject these Israeli conditions. We will not accept them," Mashaal said.

Mashaal spoke from Doha, Qatar, where he is visiting to thank Qatar for its solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel's 22-day offensive. His remarks were aired on Al-Jazeera satellite television.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said earlier Wednesday that crossings with Gaza "will only open permanently" after the freeing of Shalit.

Mashaal reiterated that Hamas insists that thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails be released in return for Shalit. Hamas has resisted any linkage between Shalit and the reopening of crossings. "In response to the child killer, Olmert," Mashaal said, "I say to you in the name of Hamas and in the name of the heroes who are holding Shalit, we will not accept that crossings be opened in return for Shalit."

Mashaal added that Hamas wants Palestinian detainees in return for Shalit's freedom. Israel has in the past rejected the demand, but media reports have said it is softening its position following the recent military offensive in Gaza..... "

"JERUSALEM // For four days running, an ambulance has driven 15-year-old Amira Ghirim from Shifa Hospital in Gaza to the Rafah border in the hope that she will be allowed to cross into Egypt and then on to France, where she has been promised emergency surgery.

Amira’s left arm and thigh were crushed and her internal organs damaged by falling rubble when a shell hit her home in the Tel al Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City in the final days of Israel’s offensive. The attack killed her father, brother and sister, leaving her an orphan.

But, despite her urgent need for surgery, Amira has been turned away at the border each time, said her aunt, Mona Ghirim. “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.”.....

Mohammed Salem, the head of a medical group based in France known as Pal Med, was among the doctors accompanying the children through the crossing last Friday. He said the doctors had been allowed through, but the ambulances carrying the children were blocked. When the doctors tried to return, they were denied entry into Gaza.

“We do not know why the children were refused,” he said. “We had organised all the relevant papers and documents. We were told once we passed through Rafah that the ambulance carrying the children would be allowed to follow.”

The reason appears to be a sudden change of policy by the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah, which issued a statement the day before the four children tried to leave Gaza saying that it believed there was “no more reason to refer any more children for treatment abroad”......"

"......After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military option against it. In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional hegemony. Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along “then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used,” and “many innocent Iranians will die.” To Israel’s chagrin and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize slipped another notch. It was high time to find a defenseless target to annihilate. Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting gallery. Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to agree to a ceasefire......."

".....Today, we visited several families whose homes were taken over and used as military positions by Israeli soldiers during the three-week military campaign. In most cases, the families had fled or were expelled by the soldiers. In some cases, however, the soldiers prevented the families from leaving, using them as “human shields.”

In the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, members of the Sammouni family told us that 46 of them, mostly children, were held captive in their home for two days in early January......

Every single room in the house had been extensively vandalized. In the houses, we saw Israeli army supplies, sleeping bags, medical kits, empty boxes of munitions and spent cartridges of Israeli bullets, providing incontrovertible evidence of the soldiers’ stay in these houses.

Every one of these houses we visited was in a shocking state. All the rooms had been ransacked, with furniture overturned and/or smashed. The families’ clothing, documents and other personal items were strewn all over the floors and soiled and, in one case, urinated on. In one house in the Sayafa area in north Gaza, several cardboard boxes full of excrement were left in the house – although there was a functioning toilet which the soldiers could have used.

Walls were defaced with crude threats written in Hebrew, such as “next time it will hurt more” and, in one house, a drawing of a naked woman. As well, in every case, the soldiers had smashed holes in the outer walls of the houses to use as lookout and sniper positions......"

"The following is a Press TV interview with respected American author, political analyst and world-renowned linguist, Professor Noam Chomsky.

January 24, 2009 -- Press TV: Professor Chomsky, we better start with Pakistan. The White House not commenting on the killings of people [in cross-border drone attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan]. Richard Holbrooke, someone whom you've written about in the context of Yugoslavia, is the man [President Barack] Obama has chosen to solve the situation......"

"Recent accusations from United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Iran is engaged in "subversive activity" sound oddly familiar. As a senior Central Intelligence Agency official and advisor to presidents, Gates has claimed for years that Iran wants weapons of mass destruction and plans terrorist attacks. And this would not be the first time Gates has used intelligence claims to torpedo an opening with an adversary...."

"Because it is generally accepted by the so-called "international community" that Hamas is a major threat to Israel, and therefore to world peace and security, France has dispatched a frigate to participate in a new blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Sunday Times reported that United States naval ships hunting pirates in the Gulf of Aden have been instructed to track down Iranian arms shipments (25 January). Many other European states offered their navies to assist. Indeed, United Nations Security Council resolution 1860 emphasized the need to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition.

Unfortunately not one European country offered to send its navy to render humanitarian assistance to the thousands of injured, hungry, cold and homeless people in Gaza as a result of Israel's attack. Perhaps helping children dying from white phosphorus burns, or just lack of clean water, would be seen as supporting "terrorism.".......

The gunboats that Europe is sending to police the inmates of the Gaza Ghetto are not manifestations of strength, neither are they -- or the recent shocking statements of European Union Humanitarian chief Louis Michel in Gaza blaming Hamas for Israel's crimes on 26 January -- acts of responsible diplomacy in pursuit of peace and stability; they are a new prescription, if not a clear endorsement, for further bloodshed and war crimes. They are signs of a moral weakness and corruption unparalleled since Europeans stood by silently at stations and watched as their compatriots were loaded onto Nazi trains. Who could have thought that in the 21st century such things would need to be said -- and to those we thought had overcome their terrible history? But silence is not, and should not be an option any more. For years we have been told we should learn from the darkest episode in Europe's history, but never make comparisons to it lest we diminish its enormity. But the horrifying atrocities in Gaza which an Israeli official proudly predicted last March would be a "bigger holocaust" compel us to cast our reservations aside.

There is a shortcut to calm, the elimination of violence and eventually peace. It is a lesson that should have been learned many years, and countless thousands of lives ago: justice."

Touring some of Gaza's worst-hit areas of Israel's 22-day assault which killed about 1,300 Palestinians, including 400 children, Louis Michel, a senior EU official and former Belgian foreign minister, described the situation as "abominable, indescribable". He then added:

"At this time we have to also recall the overwhelming responsibility of Hamas. I intentionally say this here - Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such."

He then went on to state that there would be no dialogue with Hamas, saying its use of terrorism against Israeli civilians, including the use of "human shields" in Gaza meant it was not a legitimate resistance movement. He called on Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist and to renounce violence.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7851545.stm

We the signators of this petition are shocked, appalled and outraged by these comments.

They are the moral equivalent of rubbing salt into the wounds of the people of Gaza.

We demand the immediate ouster of Louis Michel from his position as EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid. We also demand a public apology be immediately given to the people of Gaza, especially to those who have lost members of their family in Israel's 22-day attack on Gaza.